A young trans woman's views on politics, media, and whatever else strikes her fancy, including speaking in the third person.

Monday, March 26, 2012

My Little Pony ~ A look at a couple of current projects

Hey again, everyone. Or maybe for this post I should say 'everypony.'

As many of you may know, I'm a pretty big fan of My Little Pony. For some reason, the candy-colored equines have wormed their way into the coldest recesses of my twisted black heart. *cough*

Oh, Rainbow Dash. <3

As the show prepares to wind down it's second season, the fan community is just getting started. Many bronies (fans of the show, for those of you who are not yet part of the herd) have applied their creative energy to the community in the form of fanfics, music, art, crafts, even video games!

What I'd like to talk about today is a couple of book projects that are currently going on, namely Past Sins and Fallout Equestria. I must admit that I have never been a huge fan of fanfics; the only one I follow regularly is Misfiled Dreams, which ties into the Misfile comic series. But when I learned that a group of bronies were going to have an actual hardcopy book published, I couldn't help but take interest.

So, here's what's going on. Due to the growing prevalence of print-on-demand services, and the growing amount of finished, high quality fanfic projects, a couple of loose groups have decided to print professional-quality novels of some of these fanfics. Fallout Equestria is one of the more highly regarded finished works, and Past Sins is another. Both of them are receiving this treatment, and both projects are shaping up nicely.

Fallout Equestria's project is being organized on Facebook. It is slated to begin printing in the next couple weeks, and will cost approximately $75 for the five-volume hardcover set. Unfortunately, signups for the books are over and they are now taking payments, so nobody new can sign up. They will put out the PDFs for individual printing, but you can count on that being significantly more expensive.

I'm not going to talk about the fic itself here; that's not what this post is about. Either you've read it and I'm preaching to the choir, or you haven't and you should read my interview that I'll be doing later. Basically, if you're a fan of Fallout and a fan of ponies, you owe it to yourself to read this. But you should probably get a box of tissues and a night light first. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll have nightmares, you'll get sucked in and lose sleep. The group is also tentatively planning on publishing the Project Horizons spinoff after this project is completed. Keep your eyeballs peeled.

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And LittlePip is just so darn adorable. Until she opens her mouth. Such language, little pony!

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The other one that's going on right now, Past Sins, I know significantly less about. I've never read the fanfic, and it provokes pretty strong reactions, both positive and negative, among the fanbase. Then again, I bought Doctor Whoof (more on that later)... In any case, the group that is working on this novel seems to be doing a pretty awesome job of it thus far. They've already smashed through their necessary pledges for the printing at 260/100, and each person signing up makes the book cheaper for everyone. Last I checked it's around $30, and signups will be taken through May 31st.